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WorkAdvance

Project

Overview

Project Overview

Past evaluations have provided solid evidence regarding what works to help low-income individuals become employed. However, these studies have also found that many people who found jobs were not better off financially, in part because these jobs were unstable, low paying, and provided few advancement opportunities. More recent randomized controlled evaluations of both sector-based initiatives and job retention and advancement initiatives have yielded evidence of strategies that may be effective in improving job stability and increasing earnings. The WorkAdvance program combines the most successful features of these programs and can be viewed as a component of a career pathways approach.

WorkAdvance is one of the evidence-based programs that was replicated through a national Social Innovation Fund project sponsored by the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City and the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYC Opportunity). The program helps participants prepare for and enter quality jobs in selected sectors with opportunities for career growth. Once placed, participants are provided further assistance to guide them on a path of career advancement.

WorkAdvance goes beyond the previous generation of employment programs, concentrating on demand-driven skills training and identifiable career pathways. Findings show the approach increased earnings and led to advancement gains over time at the most successful study sites. One program, Per Scholas, boosted earnings by 20 percent in the last year of follow-up.

A sector-focused approach to job training can help low-income adults build skills for jobs in high-demand fields with opportunities for career growth. In this episode, MDRC researcher Richard Hendra offers lessons from WorkAdvance, a skill-building program that works closely with employers to help job seekers prepare for and enter quality jobs.

The local subgrantee program at each site is grounded in a targeted sector (for example, health care or information technology) for which the program provider has in-depth knowledge and strong relationships with employers. WorkAdvance is not just a job placement program; its goal is to prepare, train, place, and sustain unemployed and low-wage workers in quality jobs with benefits (such as health insurance) and established career tracks. A focus on career advancement is instilled in all services of the program. Training results in industry-recognized postsecondary credentials, as is the case in many career pathways initiatives.

The program model is designed to meet the individual needs of workers by providing the following four core service components:

Sector-focused preemployment services. Each participant receives an orientation customized to the targeted sector, meets with a career coach to assess the participant’s interest in the sector and to create an individual career plan, and receives job-readiness preparation (in soft skills, résumé writing, etc.) tailored to the sector.

Job development and placement in targeted occupations. Program staff members capitalize on new and existing relationships with employers in the targeted industry to place participants in appropriate occupations, match them with jobs that suit their skills, and help them identify future advancement opportunities in the industry.

Postemployment services. Coaching is provided to participants for up to two years after random assignment to promote job retention and career advancement, assist with reemployment, and address issues that may arise with employers.

The WorkAdvance evaluation will seek to address the following key questions:

What does it take to mount this type of program?

How were postemployment services implemented, and do these services promote advancement where other programs have faced challenges?

To what extent did the WorkAdvance programs improve employment, employment retention, earnings, wage rates, hours worked, employer-provided benefits, and earnings beyond the levels attained by control group members?

Which types of participants are most likely or least likely to benefit from this approach and achieve real work gains?

WorkAdvance goes beyond the previous generation of employment programs, concentrating on demand-driven skills training and identifiable career pathways. Findings show the approach increased earnings and led to advancement gains over time at the most successful study sites. One program, Per Scholas, boosted earnings by 20 percent in the last year of follow-up.

A sector-focused approach to job training can help low-income adults build skills for jobs in high-demand fields with opportunities for career growth. In this episode, MDRC researcher Richard Hendra offers lessons from WorkAdvance, a skill-building program that works closely with employers to help job seekers prepare for and enter quality jobs.

The impact of the program is being rigorously measured through a random assignment research design. In this design — which is widely considered to be the most reliable evaluation approach — eligible individuals are assigned through a lottery to either a program group that is offered WorkAdvance services or to a control group that is not eligible for WorkAdvance services but that remains eligible for other services in the community. To assist local subgrantee programs with the development and launch of the various components of WorkAdvance, each of the subgrantees received technical support from the study team.

Across the four sites in Tulsa, New York City, and northeast Ohio, the evaluation will examine the outcomes of approximately 2,500 research sample members, roughly half of whom will have received WorkAdvance services. In addition to baseline data about participants collected at the time of random assignment, the research will rely on program activity data from each site’s management information system, unemployment insurance wage records data, a survey administered around two years after random assignment, labor market information, program records on recruitment and screening procedures, observations of program activities, and interviews with participants, employers, and program staff members. The project will also conduct a benefit-cost analysis across the subgrantees.

WorkAdvance goes beyond the previous generation of employment programs, concentrating on demand-driven skills training and identifiable career pathways. Findings show the approach increased earnings and led to advancement gains over time at the most successful study sites. One program, Per Scholas, boosted earnings by 20 percent in the last year of follow-up.

A sector-focused approach to job training can help low-income adults build skills for jobs in high-demand fields with opportunities for career growth. In this episode, MDRC researcher Richard Hendra offers lessons from WorkAdvance, a skill-building program that works closely with employers to help job seekers prepare for and enter quality jobs.

Molina has over 20 years of experience providing technical and operational assistance to workforce development service providers, and has worked at MDRC for 17 years on numerous workforce development evaluations.

As vice president for accountability and deployment, Goldman is a member of MDRC’s corporate management team, responsible for assessing staffing needs and leading MDRC’s Quality Assurance and Risk Management program covering all of MDRC’s projects.

Hendra directs the Center for Data Insights which is bringing state of the art data science methods to help harness data to improve programs and better serve populations in need. During his tenure at MDRC, Hendra has led the research on a range of welfare, housing, asset building, and workforce development projects.

Tessler has more than 15 years of experience with operations and implementation research at MDRC, focusing primarily on employment, training, and work-support use among low-wage workers and individuals receiving housing and food assistance.

Pennington joined MDRC in 2006. She has been involved in many aspects of MDRC’s research, including program start-up, survey development, data management, implementation and impact analyses, report writing, and technical assistance with data.

Since joining MDRC in December 2010, Olejniczak has assisted with study design, worked closely with program staff members to provide program and evaluation support, created tools for monitoring program and study implementation, and led and conducted field research.

Dalporto supports career and technical education work that spans MDRC’s K-12 Education, Postsecondary Education, and Low-Wage Workers policy areas, bringing her experience as both a qualitative researcher and operations specialist to that work.

COMPLETELISTOFPUBLICATIONS

WorkAdvance goes beyond the previous generation of employment programs, concentrating on demand-driven skills training and identifiable career pathways. Findings show the approach increased earnings and led to advancement gains over time at the most successful study sites. One program, Per Scholas, boosted earnings by 20 percent in the last year of follow-up.

The August 2019 In Practice blog post offers tips for programs to ensure that the participants they recruit, actually enroll. In this post, we examine some key lessons from MDRC’s evaluation of the WorkAdvance project to help turn program recruits into program success stories.

WorkAdvance offers training and placement services to help prepare individuals for quality jobs in sectors that have strong local demand and advancement opportunities. In this update on employment and earnings only, the most experienced provider continued to produce substantial impacts on both; one other provider increased earnings for late enrollees.